Konnichiwa! My name is Ayoy, but you can call me kopi. Employee by day, dreamer by night. Full-time wife and lover. I love coffee, tea, and the beauty that life brings!
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I think my day (or afternoon?) started on the downside. For one, something about my health is bothering me. And remember my friend who asked me to design his wedding invite. Well, he went to my house and delivered personally his wedding invitation. It turns out that he didn't use the one that I did. Honestly speaking it hurts my ego. I was lamenting the fact that he just wasted my time and effort. Looking back, I remember the time I spent meticulously trying to get it done after I came from an exhausting shift. And of course the time, I should have spent doing something important than doing something that will be ignored in the end.

But what's done is done. Being rejected, no matter how little it is, is a part of life. I probably experienced a more devastating blow in the past (unreturned text and phone calls, etc). So, I will put on my best smile and attend the wedding. I vow to look fabulous and carefree that day and show off my newly waxed legs. :)

On a more serious note, President Benigno Aquino's State of the Nation Address (SONA) was the talk of the town. As always, there had been a media frenzy about what the lawmakers and their arm candies wore on the said event, which I think was irrelevant but given much hype. Since I started following this event, I always hear and watch news reports on what the esteemed senators and congressmen and women wore at the event and how many applause did a president received. And from the start, I really DON'T GET IT. They always treated this event as a red carpet shindig to flaunt their gorgeous designer gowns and sparkly jewelry. These people feel that they are living in the first world. Good thing Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago offers a solution to spare us from this craziness yearly: a resolution for uniforms.

But my attention was not on the SONA itself but what was happening outside the Malacanang Palace. While the schmaltzy lawmakers were having a fashion show, a commotion was building up between the police and the protesters. And in the middle of this, a police officer was trying his best to do his job despite the hunger and exhaustion he was feeling. PO1 Joselito Sevilla, among with other policemen, was given an order to keep the peace and order amidst the show that was going on inside the Palace. Despite his condition, he stood there and followed what his superiors told him to do. But sometimes, a man can only take too much. Two days without proper sleep, deprived of food, and faced with an angry mob, he broke down. I saw from the pictures how he wept, probably because of stress. He wept but stood his grounds. According to the report, he tried to explain to the protesters that he was just doing his job. But the angry mob didn't care. They just wanted to push their ideals not knowing the officers in the front were just trying to follow orders and definitely don't want a raucous. Probably, they also don't want to be there.

It is a silent rule in the police and military not to show your emotions. To have empathy instead to sympathy. But what PO1 Sevilla did there was showing that they, too, have a human side. They are hurting and also don't want to hurt people. But what amazed me the most is how he fought the aggressiveness and violence with his silent but sturdy disposition. Thomas van Beersum, the foreigner who was shouting on his face, did not understand what this policeman was feeling. He said in his open letter that, "I hope you realize that when you follow orders that are detrimental to
the people, you become complicit in the crimes that are carried out." PO1 Sevilla is bound by his order, and the order given was to maintain peace and order which I think is not "detrimental to the people." The noble policeman did his job without hurting anybody.

Growing up, I had the notion that a policeman is someone synonymous to corruption, kotong, always arrived at the scene late, and other illegal acts. But PO1 Sevilla was able to show the people the other side of a policeman. He was able to show, with his little act, that you can express what you have to say without using force and aggression. He shows that there is still hope for our police force.